I Hear Fela Kuti's "Lady" in Snoh Aalegra's "I Love You"

Press play on Snoh Aalegra's new single, "I Love You," and give it five seconds.

There. That's Fela Kuti's "Lady." I hear a direct sample, clear as day from 0:05 to 0:17, and it keeps running under the production for the rest of the song. Go ahead and check my work. On Fela's original, the 1972 Shakara album, it's 0:57 to 1:18. I'll wait.

Okay, you're back. Some of you are nodding. Some of you think I've lost it. Fair. Here's why I'd trust my ears anyway. I ran African music strategy at Spotify and launched the Afro Hub, and I was an SVP of global music strategy at Sony. I've also produced and done A&R, which means I've spent years in rooms where somebody eventually says "we need to clear that." Two decades of that ruins listening. I can't hear a bass line without wondering who gets paid for it.

So I checked the credits. Apple Music, release day, October 21. Then again this weekend, like a man checking the stove. The press release tells you who was in the room: Snoh and Joel Compass wrote it, they and Josh Grant produced it, Nile Rodgers plays guitar, Raphael Saadiq plays bass. What a room. And in all of it, on Apple Music, I don't see Fela Kuti, Tony Allen or Africa 70. For the record, Tony Allen played drums on Shakara. He's kind of important.

I'm not telling you anyone did anything on purpose. I have no idea how it got there or why it isn't listed. Clearances run late. Credits get filled in around album time, and the album doesn't land until November 13. Maybe the paperwork is in the mail. What I can tell you is what I hear and what I see on the page, and right now they don't match.

Here's why my ears went to Lagos so fast. In the early 80s, Nigerian pop and club music went electric. Keyboards and drum machines took over, and Christy Essien and Jide Obi replaced Osita Osadebe and the Oriental Brothers on the charts. Steve Monite has said he was the first Nigerian musician to play electronic disco. Soundway put out a compilation in 2016 called Doing It In Lagos, and if you've never heard it, you've been dancing to the wrong decade.

Snoh says the album took her back to the music she fell in love with growing up. Prince mentored her until he died in 2016, and the press release describes the production as reminiscent of classic 80s and 90s R&B. Fine. There's plenty of room for Lagos in that story.

This isn't a new kind of story, either. In 2010, Shakira's "Waka Waka" borrowed its chorus from "Zangaléwa," a 1986 hit by the Cameroonian band Golden Sounds. The band got credited later, after the outcry. African records have a long layover. Some of them are still at baggage claim.

Some layovers run longer. Solomon Linda wrote "Mbube," died in 1962 without receiving royalties for it, and his family didn't settle over "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" until 2006. I won't joke about that one.

One more thing. As I see it, the Afrobeats wave that hit Western pop from 2017 to 2024 has cooled. NPR said in September that the road to a US crossover has narrowed for African pop stars. The sound didn't leave, though. It moved. Billboard's editors have been tracking Latin Afrobeats since 2024, and for the 2026 World Cup, Shakira and Burna Boy made the anthem together. Yes, that Shakira. Lisa, Anitta and Rema cut a record that mixes K-pop, Latin pop and Afrobeats. In Mandarin-language pop, Wu Bai leaned into Afrobeat, Fela's lineage, on 2016's Ding Zi Hua and won Best Taiwanese Album at the Golden Melody Awards. Vinida Weng's Fuzhou-dialect Afrobeat track "MoJiaDai" went viral on Rap of China in 2022, and a Chinese artist named Chisway put out "KOLO" this spring. Everybody wants the rhythm. The paperwork is still on its layover.

The song is days old. The album is out November 13, and I'll check Apple Music again that morning.

Until then, I'll ask what the credits don't: where's Fela?